Homemade Steel Guitar

[spud1950]

I'd been wanting a steel guitar and decided to have a go at making my own.The body is rock maple,the fret board is paduak.The fret markers are pre made inlay strips I got at a woodworking store.The position markers are cut out of old ivory piano key overlays. The nut is bone and the pickup is a GFS New York.I don't have any woodworking power tools,so outside of using a friends drill press and saber saw,most of it is made with hand tools.Took awhile to do it,but I really enjoyed it.Next thing I'm going to do is make a stand for it.Sounds really great too.Here's some pics of it.
s74.photobucket.com/albums/i272/spud1950/Steel%20Guitar/?action=view¤t=Steel1.jpg&refPage=&imgAnch=imgAnch1

[ChrisK]

Looks great!

I'm a big fan of padouk.
guitarnuts2.proboards45.com/index.cgi?board=music&action=display&thread=1144693179

So what finish did you use? You wouldn't want the body to warp and affect your string height setup. ;D

And when will you extrapolate the scale to 36 semitones (at which point your bridge pickup becomes your neck pickup)?

Note that on a steel guitar you don't actually need a fret "bored" ( ) since it's never touched.

You can make any extreme "line board" graphic in any CAD or drawing package and just glue it on and laminate it for moisture resistance.

1.0594630943592952645618252949463

Ruled rules rule!
(And scaled scales scale!)


I've often thought aboot building a lap guitar. Maybe I will.

Here's a couple of useful bridges for (re)tuning flexibility:

Hipshot Trilogy Bridges

Hipshot string bending system

These parts are hard to find directly unless you know how to look for them on their site.

Look under "Shop by Instrument",
"Electric Guitar",
Scroll down to "View all 66 electric guitar items in Bridges, tailpieces"

[spud1950]

Thanks for the compliment.Your PadoukCaster look great.I was going for a real vintage look and I think I hit it pretty well.I used Minwax wipe on satin poly for the finish.As far as the extrapolating goes,I was debating about just how far to go,but I decided to keep it simple and stick to the traditional guitar range for now.That's one of the reasons that I screwed the board down,so I could easily change it if I ever wanted to.That Hipshot Trilogy would be great for a steel guitar,if someone wanted to spend that kind of money.There actually was a steel guitar bridge that was made in the 40's and 50's that was very similar.It didn't have levers for each string,but had them on three of the strings so you could switch to different tunings.I actually saw a couple of them for sale on eBay.I need to experiment with the various traditional steel guitar tunings,of which there are many,and find one that suits me.Here's the go to site about steel guitars.History,tunings,famous players,etc.They're easy to build and fun to play.

www.well.com/user/wellvis/steel.html

[ChrisK]

You might find the Trilogy bridge to be of much use on a 6 string steel since the additional string tuning issues are usually handled by going to 8 or 10 strings. After all, you're using a parallel bar (the slide).

[spud1950]

I understand what you're saying,but at $175,I'll pass.I think it's a great piece of engineering and a great concept,but I have no desire to spend that kind of money.It only cost me about $65 to build this one. For what I use it for and my playing level on it,I'll just find the right open tuning for the style I want to play and leave it at that.Actually,considering the really nominal cost to make make this,if I ever felt I needed to have a more sophisticated steel,I can take the same money that bridge costs and build a really nice 8 or 10 string,which would be a cool project.

[ChrisK]

If you do go to a higher string count, check out www.billlawrence.com for pickups.